Our Little Secret
by PlatinumGal
Summary: Merlin and Arthur journey to the distant Land of Deltora, making new alliances, which are certainly more tenuous than than they would like...  Part of the Deltora Crossover Challenge.


_A/N This is part of the Deltora Crossover Challenge. To enter, head over to the Challenge thread in the Deltora Forums to check out the guidelines for this challenge. For me, its mainly a character development exercise.  
Takes place post series 3, for both Fandom's. May contain nuts. And Spoilers J.  
_

**Merlin: **Takes place in a mystical kingdom where magic is banned. The titular character, naturally, has magic. Cue Drama as he struggles to fulfil his destiny while keeping his nature a secret from Prince Arthur, his friend, and keeping everybody else alive. Despite being a Family show, its fandom is filled with slash fiction, and not without good reason...

**Deltora Quest: **Another Magical kingdom. Lief Jasmine and Barda are three companions, who go about first restoring the magical belt of Deltora to defeat the evil Shadowlord, then rescuing Deltoran slaves from Mordor...sorry The Shadowlands and finally dispelling a final, this-can't-possibly-fail Gambit from the land. Its fandom is also contains a fair bit of Slash Fiction (even I am guilty of it ;)) although with a little less prompting on the authors part.

_**Got That? Good.**_

King Lief liked sitting on the beach, watching the ships dock at the quay. It reminded him of the times when he was younger, the Shadowlord had forbidden the coast to the public so he and his friends had snuck to the ruined docks, just to watch the tide come in.

Those times seemed so long ago; he doubted those friends even remembered he existed. Even if they did, what would they talk about? He'd been to places they couldn't even imagine, most of them hadn't even been as far out as the small fishing village near Del. And that was fine, he told himself hurriedly, they had no need to, they were going to be mothers, or do the same job as their fathers did. He himself would have been a blacksmith, had he not undertaken the quest. An odd thought now. The ship he was waiting for appeared on the horizon, so he stood up and returned to the palace.

Inside the throne room, Lief sat next to Jasmine, his wife, trying to arrange himself into a suitably regal position. She winked at him and did likewise. It was their first official political meeting since their wedding, and both were as determined as the other to not be the one to 'screw it up'.

Several months after the defeat of the Sister of the South and the Grey Tide, Lief dispatched several ships to the other few countries known to them. The first to respond was a city named 'Camelot' in a relatively distant city country known as 'Albion'.

* * *

Aboard the fair ship '_Merthur', _Merlin felt his stomach heave.

_Why did _he _have to drag _**me **_along? Surely he's more than capable of looking after __**himself **__for a week?_

He thought back to those few days he'd been away, several weeks before.

_Maybe not__..._

He turned his thoughts to their destination, in the vague hope it would take his mind off the churning feeling in his stomach. He had no desire to see breakfast again. Or dinner. Both had consisted of hard bread, so the only way to tell the difference would be to see which was more digested...He shook his head like a wet puppy.

To be honest, he was not looking forward to the trip, political 'outings' were rarely fun, and this one looked to be no different, considering they knew nothing about it, besides the fact it was named 'Deltora' (certainly seemed like a silly name to him, but then, he could hardly talk, coming from 'Camelot') and that the king was younger than Arthur himself.

Which, he thought to himself, would certainly get on the princes nerves.

And that thought alone was enough to keep him cheerful; at least until he emptied the contents of his stomach.

* * *

Merlin felt relief wash through him as the _Merthur_ docked.

"Please don't vomit in front of our hosts Merlin" said Arthur, looking at him with both disdain and fondness, "it's a poor lookout for Camelot if word gets out we're all week-stomached girls blouses,"

Merlin snorted and staggered over to the gangplank. Feeling an overwhelming urge to push Arthur off into the dark waters, he lurched across, desperate not to fall in himself.

A large bearded man greeted them on the jetty, naming himself 'Barda', alongside another man of similar height, with deep scars along his face, named 'Doom'.

Merlin sniggered slightly, but after receiving a sharp pinch on his arm, courtesy of Arthur, developed a strong coughing fit. Doom stared at him silently.

_He must have been through a lot, the scars are probably deeper than his skin, _thought Merlin, _maybe he's a little mad..._  
_He'd have to be__...__to consider the name 'Doom'._

_

* * *

_

As they travelled through the city streets, Merlin noted Doom seemed naturally withdrawn, staring at both Merlin and Arthur with clear suspicion. Evidently he did not like the prospect of babysitting foreigners.

Barda, by contrast, seemed positively bright and cheerful, but even he, on closer inspection was emotionally distant.

Merlin tried hard not to be peeved by this frosty treatment, but he had an inexplicable inner desire to set one of his escorts' heads on fire.

Arthur seemed remarkably oblivious to the general attitude to those around him, and talked cheerfully with all three of his companions.

Fortunately for future Deltora/Albion relations, they arrived at the palace without any flaming heads.

Barda and Doom had the Arthur and Merlin wait in the foyer, while they continued deeper, to announce the arrival of the strangers.

* * *

"The tall one is a little..." Barda made a small hand gesture that was probably supposed to mean 'abnormal' "but his friend, the one I am assuming to be the prince is..." another gesture, this time supposed to resemble 'Arrogant Arse' but came across as 'Fornicating Baboon'.

Lief raised an eyebrow.

"Send them in" he stated, as grandly as possible.

Barda nodded and returned to the foyer, leading the two men in. The taller 'abnormal' one stood a small ways back, while the 'arrogant baboon arse' made his way to the two thrones and bowed low. Lief nodded curtly and Arthur raised his head.

"I assume I am addressing the higher authority of you both?" said Lief.

_Yes, __**this **__is royal speak...__  
_

"Indeed." Stated Arthur bowing again. Jasmine frowned.

"Why the Prince? Why not the king?" displaying her natural bluntness.

At the back of the room, Merlin closed his eyes.

Arthur bit his lip.

"Fath...The king is unable to visit. He is...not in the...best place at the moment."

Jasmine raised an eyebrow but said nothing. Clearly, this was a sensitive subject.

Lief recognised the princes reaction, and hastily changed the subject.

"So...here's to new alliances!"

* * *

Two weeks later, Merlin and Arthur stood once again at the docks, this time accompanied by the two monarchs themselves.

_All in all_, thought Merlin to himself, as Arthur proffered a cheek to Jasmine hopefully, _this_ _could've gone worse. _He laughed inwardly as Jasmine chose to ignore this, so Arthur contented himself with simply bowing his head for the umpteenth time.

"...and your jester was..._most_ amusing" chuckled Lief nervously to Arthur.

_Jester? Why I ought to..._

There was a tap on his shoulder, he looked round to see the strange man called Doom, who had met them at the docks that first day. Doom beckoned him over.

"Yes?" asked Merlin.

"You, you're not what you seem are you?" said Doom flatly.

Merlin blinked.

"What would I seem to be then?"

Doom peered over to check that Arthur was not eavesdropping, then whispered: "You have..." he frowned, "_magic"_

Merlin did not answer. He'd learnt that magic was not forbidden here, but in any case, he was not keen to have 'Doom' broadcast it throughout the harbour. Doom clearly registered the silence, and a small smile, the first _real _smile Merlin had seen on the scarred mans face, which seemed to take several years off him as he said "It'll be our little secret."

**Fin**

**

* * *

**

_So yeah, I played my muse album on loop; till I got this damned thing DONE...Great challenge though, very fun __J__ Feels a bit, mediocre after reading the other entries, but oh well. :) I kind of had to rush to get it in -_-_

_I was sooooo tempted to put slash in at the end, but as it goes against the rules, I shall withhold...for now... :)_

_*Post series 3, it seems Uther is a bit...erm...unhappy?_


End file.
